Preserved Wook is an oldtime New England railway engineman who calls to life again the history & technology not only of the steam locomotive in the LAST Steam Age of the Old Atlantic West, but of many a wonderful way of getting around in the World, in a better time when travel indeed was for the few…and the very few!

My 1979 B&N (“Booze & Narcotics”) RR Tie Gang # 978 Summer Tour

WE actually had teeshirts that read ” — The Rest, We’re The BEST”. Wearing THIS garment with the actual gang number & RR logo on it would get you fired if you didn’t have your ninety days in & dues paid — and, even so, you STILL couldn’t have it on at work. Fortunately, all of the Division officials were these wormy little Republican househusbands in blue-rinsed hair & pastel shirts whose wives positively WOULD not let them go sniffing around any of the female gandies in any of the Alliance RR bars by night; these middle-management Henry Tremblechins all stayed at home in their new-built suburban allotment, sweating even in the 64 degree AC & awaiting the “Reagen Miracle,” then just a year away….

The women track laborers were a novelty & a mixed lot; I think it was only the second year the RR had hired any & there were three on our gang of forty or so. One, redhaired Patty, worked to beat Hell and was majoring in (you GUESSED it!) business in college in McCook; she had a new ‘Vette and used to haul me & Dave Kivimaki on mad outings after booze & weed from Fort Collins. I didn’t drink or use drugs that Summer & was saving money after a Peace Corps-stint in Morocco.

And nor did Dave — or Patty.

SHE was providing the goods to her nominal boyfriend on the gang, BJ, a mean ex-cop & ex-MP who’d been kicked out of the McCook, NE, PD AND the Army before that, both times for police brutality. Her reason for “bein’ THAT -sshole’s girlfriend around HERE is that it keeps the REAL losers away & anyway he dances real good, at least at the start of the night….” Apparently, passionate sex wasn’t much to do with it since BJ generally passed out at about eleven, usually after one or two fights.

(He was an Androcles, The Lion, case as far as I went, because I had a bitty screwdriver that he could use to tighten up his mirror aviator glasses.)

None of their dope business was a problem — except that the coke sold by the foreman, Kenny, a big Indian from Pine Ridge, was cut AND expensive; he claimed a monopoly & tried to get rid of Patty because of her dealing, but she “explained to him on the side” that he was about to have “a real hard time” in spite of his union rights on account of certain “business deals” going on in the gang.

As I said, the RR women were a mixed lot & neither Kenny or our Vice-Foreman, Doug “Miles & Miles Of” Miles — he had a large (!) beer belly — liked them; this was mainly because both had got the chlamydia from off of a woman called N– & who had also supplied a dose to Ted Shores & some of the other gandies.

[Chip, from New York, called her “a syph sister”; and, as an amateur student of slang, I just want to note here that this is the last time — June, 1979 — that I ever heard any derivative of syphilis used in casual sexual namecalling in North America, by anyone except myself — BW]

Anyway, after Patty subterraneously burned Kenny to the RR cops, Acting Foreman Wendell “One Man” Spencer came on in charge; he kept his yellow hardhat like any other “dumb laborer” & said he was there “just for the duration”.

He was thirty-one, 5′ 9″ or so & squatty, he limped, looked forty-eight or fifty, had a plastic shin & foot from Vietnam & got on top of the inefficient & lazy-ass bad-gang situation straight off the plane, by first of all, the first day during lunch & all by himself, changing an old tie for new, pulling the spikes, jacking the rails, pulling out the old (still unsawed!) tie & dragging in & nailing up a new one.

Then, right away as we all got down out of the bus from watching him doing all this work during lunch, he beat up & got on top of & pinned the 6′ 3″ twenty-four old BJ for making remarks:

“D’ya give up NOW, you sonofaBITCH?” Wendell Spencer demanded, three of four times I think it was, and bashing BJ’s head in between times in the ballast rocks while he was thinking about the question.

Anyway, BJ finally caved & so that was That for THAT….

“One Man Wendell,” so-called after the tie-changing sequence, simply KNEW how to lead the recalcitrant & the non-productive — HE got us way over (!) quota on ties replaced weekly by 1) making us work like Hell M-TH, and then 2) letting everybody punch-in & drink beer & smoke weed behind the sand dunes on Fridays. Only he never went for official Foreman, “because I told them over & OVER, I AIN’T going to read them pussy safety-lessons out LOUD every morning to you guys at breakfast * …I mean either you KNOW what to do to KEEP from getting real dead around here, or you damn DON’T!”

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* — We lived on old (!), dirty (!!), hot (!!!) bunk cars & had a galley, kitchen-car & a GREAT cook called Marcy; he was an artist, oil-painting, during the Winters.